The Québec Ombudsman unveiled a report on Wednesday concerning the conditions at the Charles-Edouard-Bourgeois Protection and Rehabilitation Center for Young People and Mothers with Adjustment Difficulties, a youth center in Trois-Rivières which welcomes adolescents aged 12 aged 17 who are in the criminal justice system or who are simply waiting for a foster family.
It’s hard to imagine what life is like in a rehabilitation center before you set foot there.
After a few visits and numerous calls, several questionable methods have come to light. The most important: very severe discipline.
“The first type of withdrawal which is used as a disciplinary measure when a young person does not respect the instructions, in the room, we tell them go to your room when he does not listen to the instructions for example, it will be one of the measures to say well you go to the room. The problem is that we realized that there were certain disciplinary measures that were imposed for reasons that we question,” explained Marc-André Dowd, Citizen Protector.
For example, when a young person speaks when silence is obligatory during travel or even if he asks to go to the toilet when it is not the designated time for that, he may end up in his room. .
Everything still depends on the tolerance threshold of the speaker, which varies from one speaker to another, another point raised by the investigators.
Once again, we point out the question of the lack of places in the report. It states that a child can be placed in a room, called the security emergency, which is normally reserved for those who are disorganized or who represent a risk.
Some people can stay there for several days even though it is not designed to be a living environment. Only a bed is there, with no other furniture.
Freedoms that are sometimes taken away from children who do not necessarily have a restrictive plan to follow. The instructions apply as much to those who must comply with intensive supervision as to others.
“Customers who are not subject to an intensive supervision measure find themselves restricted in the exercise of certain rights. Thus, in particular, it evolves in an environment in which the doors are locked, outings outside are little or not permitted outside the family environment, the framework of the living environment is less flexible, etc.” we read in the report.
And the young people who are admitted are not necessarily aware of their rights, we can read in the report.
Recommendations
The Protector made several recommendations, among others, to better analyze the reasons for withdrawals from the room, to develop a plan to reduce these withdrawals which are considered too numerous in a day including those which are planned in the schedule, to ensure that the security emergency is used wisely and to find a way to exercise the two mandates of the center in separate units, therefore to distinguish between those who must have an extremely strict framework and those who do not. don’t need it.
Another establishment could, for example, be used to separate the two types of clientele.
The recommendations were all accepted by the establishment and must be implemented no later than March 31, for most of them.
The Public Protector highlighted the good collaboration of the center’s management throughout the investigation.
2024-02-01 00:41:09
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